October 2009 to January 2010
October 2009 through January 2010
October 1: I start a class called “Intro to Judaism!” I’ve been wanting to take this class since I came here and got involved with Cantor Steinberg at Beth El Hebrew Congregation. She’s the one that ran Alan’s memorial service with Rabbi Aft and did the Sh ‘loshim service on her own for us. I’m seriously considering converting to Judaism officially, and this class is a commonly accepted requirement. I’ve been loving it although it’s a heckuvalot of reading. The teacher is Rabbi Stephanie Bernstein, and I have the greatest respect for her. She was a psychotherapist before becoming a rabbi, so she has a perspective I value a great deal. More on this subject later for sure.
October 5: I had surgery for two things that were very unpleasant. One was life-inhibiting and the other was occasionally activity-inhibiting. I’ll share the details with those who wants to know, but my more squeamish friends have sometimes regretted asking. These aren’t unusual or even horrible things, and some people could go so far as to call my squeamish friends total wimps who should just grow up, but I’ve had enough pushback to just say on my publicly accessible blog that they were simply “unpleasant.” I was ill for about 6 months, sluggish, sleepy, and crabby, but it’s over now. October and November were still slow going and extremely low on the activity scale, but I got back on my feet just in time for the holiday insanity.
Mid October: At work, I dove with two feet first into the adventure of the Annual Report to Congress (ARC) at work. Our client, one of the Department of Defense’s many offices that handles environmental issues, produces their own report to Congress every year, and my Booz Allen team creates it! It’s actually a thrilling project because I used this document a lot when I was farmed out to the Corps of Engineers for three years. Now I get to work on the team that produces the document! It’s like getting the backstage tour of a favorite show and getting hired to be on the theater staff!
Now, when I say “document,” keep in mind that the final product barely fits into a huge 4” three-ring binder. The best way to view it is online. I’ll post a link here to the finished product when it’s all done.
October 17: I got to be a mentor again in the Booz Allen & Girl Scouts “Make The Connection” program! This is an awesome program that brings together volunteers from Booz (usually young women who remember being Girl Scouts) and the Girl Scouts National Capital Council to produce a mentoring program. This isn’t mentoring where we get matched up one on one for deep philosophical teachings. The program is 4 events where about 150 Girl Scouts come to a Booz Allen office on a weekend day to go through presentations and exercises about career exploration. The Booz Allen mentors (about a dozen of us) split up and lead groups of the girls through the exercises. The goal is to allow the girls to see us in our grown up glory, ask us whatever questions they want, and get thinking about their careers outside the environment of their parents or school. I really wish I’d had something like this when I was a kid.
We work out of some Girl Scout sources, but a lot comes from the book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens” by Sean Covey, Stephen Covey’s son. I cannot recommend this book enough! It covers all sorts of issues that teenagers struggle with and helps quantify and focus their skills and desires to career paths. Again, a book I wish I’d had twenty years ago.
I deeply love this program, and I have dreams of spinning it off to the Booz Allen office in Indianapolis. Having my sister work for the Central Indiana Girl Scout Council has to have a perk in there somewhere. (No I don’t get free cookies.)
October 22 & 23: Crystal Reports class! One of the big new challenges I have at work is to learn this new (to me) software, Crystal Reports, and create more tools for us to perform QA and data mining on our ARC client’s database. This is very cool because I love data and the mining thereof, but it is extremely challenging because I’m the only one doing this. There are only three people on my team with *any* experience on our client’s database, and none of them have any experience with the Crystal Reports software. So, even getting the thing connected was hell. Many thanks again to my sweet and supportive boyfriend who helped me get through that one! Dating a computer geek has a few perks. I highly recommend it.
October 24: Fundraising Walk for the American Diabetes Association. This was a sad day really. Every year I do this fundraiser, and my friends and family are very generous to the cause. I raise a few hundred dollars in honor of Alan and my SCA friend Gyrth Oldcastle (who died 10 months before Alan from diabetes complications). But every year I dream that I’m going to get a whole lot of people together to show up en masse to the walk and create a physical presence to honor Alan and Gyrth - and it never happens. Part of it is that I’m just a very busy person, but so far, I just haven’t been able to engage the Sophie Super Energy Powers that have served me so well in event planning before. I can’t break through the depression muck to inspire other people enough to take a couple hours on a Saturday to travel to some place in downtown DC and walk a mile with other fundraising people. The whole experience is deeply depressing.
The good news is that my dear friend Randy and my extremely supportive boyfriend Scott both came out with me! I was determined to make something happen this year, and I had dreamed of getting my SCA friends to come out in garb to create something like a procession even if no one showed up. So, we were a procession of three, and I was just grateful that it was the week before Thanksgiving so that we didn’t look totally insane being in costumes. We did have one guy who liked what we were doing take our picture and say he was going to caption it: “We hate diabetes in any era!”
So, it was another year of half-hearted foot dragging for the ADA walk, but I’ll still keep doing it every year. Watch out for my donation request next September!
Somewhere in here at the end of October, I had an interesting turn of life events with a friend of mine from Judaism class. This friend of mine got a job in New York and needed someone to housesit for 6 months. I happened to be giving up my apartment on January 4th, so I offered to go housesit. We had 2 months of overlap, but I considered that time to adjust and get used to living at her house.
To summarize: She quit the job in New York, came back to her house, and now I’m living with her as a guest/roommate. She’s a sweetie, and we just decided to keep to the original plan, I’ll keep her company as I search for the perfect little studio apartment near my office in Crystal City, and I’ll move into this perfect-yet-to-be-found apartment in April. We are having a lovely time, and I’m sincerely enjoying the 15 minute commute from her house to my office. (Big improvement over the 1 hour metro commute.) She’s also a great cook, and the daughter of a professional chef, so I’m seeing more creative ways to cook healthy from her! This morning she made oatmeal-ricotta-chocolate-chip pancakes for us! YUM!!
More to come on the big picture of where the hell I’m physically living, but for now, let’s stick to chronological order of events…
October 31 - HALLOWEEN!!! This is one of my favorite holidays and since I’ve been in DC I’ve been lucky enough to share it every year with Lisa and Mona. They love the holiday too, and this year we got to party with some of Mona’s friends! It was awesome! Scott came up and we had an equal number of adults as kids walking around a really nice DC neighborhood trick or treating! Scott wore his great kilt, I wore my American Colonial period dress, Lisa went dolled up in a cool black dress with sparkles and orange fishnets (AWESOME!), and one of the dads went as a pirate! Mona was a purple and black witch, one of her friends was a goth princess (in a dress custom made that was won at a school auction), and the big surprise for me of the evening was one of the girls as Yoman Rand! Yes! The old school Star Trek blonde in the tiny red dress! (Not the nurse, that was Magel Barrett, Gene Roddenberry’s wife.) This girl’s parents were doing their sacred duty (as all parents should) in educating her by watching all the old school Star Trek episodes with her! So this kid actually knew who she was dressing up as! It was awesome! Ok, awesome for a geek like me. The rest of you can go back to watching House, or Garage, or whatever.
November 3: I voted; did you?
November 7: I had the pleasure of watching Mona play soccer! She’s joined a soccer league, and I got to watch the last game of the season. It was great! I got to hang out with the parents and learn all the new etiquette. Apparently parents are not allowed to shout from the sidelines. Parents, and fans like me, are allowed to yell only generic encouragement from the sidelines that can be encouraging to both sides. Things like “Go girls go!” and “Way to go!” are allowed. Things like “Get your ass over there for defense!” or “Go !” are not allowed. I’m betting anything concerning the referee is not allowed either, but the moms in attendance didn’t cover that.
This is one of the things I love about being an aunt! I get to be involved with kid stuff, support the kid I love, and do things completely unrelated to earning my paycheck.
I think this was the weekend when Lisa, Mona, and I went out to see the movie Where The Wild Things Are. It was awesome! It was amazing to me how different a movie it was. I heard that they tried to capture what it’s like to be a nine year old boy, and they achieved it! The movie was confusing and had an awkward, exploring, desperate feel to it in places. It was definitely “inspired by” the book and did the book honor, but they built a whole new story on top of the book’s foundation. Anyone who has ever been a nine year old boy, been close to a nine year old boy, or been the parent of a nine year old boy will enjoy this film.
November 26: Thanksgiving! I spent Thanksgiving with Scott and his parents in Raleigh. Last year, Scott gave up his Thanksgiving with his parents to come to Indianapolis to have a big Thanksgiving hoopla with my parents, my sister, her fiancé, and his family. At the time, it was a nice thing. Events have progressed since then. This year, to balance it out, I gave up my Thanksgiving with my parents and sister to have it with Scott. It was sweet and quiet. The best part was having Scott, his mom, and me all pitch in to make the dinner. The group effort was very rewarding in that no one was beat and tired at the end of the day.
December 4: My women’s circle (“Egroup” for the cognoscenti) did a big work night lead by one of the very wise women in our community, Teresita Fawcett. She’s amazing in her ability to lead women’s groups and facilitate emotional work. She helped me a lot in my healing work after Alan died and in a number of other issues since then. We hired her to teach our group some advanced facilitation techniques, and it was *awesome*! The more I do this work, the more I think this is the path to world peace.
December 8 & 9: “Leadership With Presence” class: Now, I had a very awkward annual assessment in Mid October for work. The final result was a pretty normal raise and a rating of “Meets Expectations” which was satisfactory for me. There was, however, a “development action” that required me to take a class in leadership, although I don’t really know why this class was chosen for this particular issue. This awkwardness isn’t blog material, so if you’re interested in more detail, ask me next time you see me. The interesting thing is that regardless of *why* I ended up going to this class, this class was an AMAZING AWESOME EXPERIENCE!
I’ll tell you why…
Set the way back machine for fall of 1994. I’m in New York City attending Barnard College and enjoying my opportunities to get student rate tickets to Broadway shows. That year, none other than the legendary “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast” opens and sends me into Disney geek heaven. I saw the show three times before graduating in spring of ’95.
Remember the villain “Gaston?” (“I use antlers in all of my decorating…”)
Remember his sidekick “Le Fu?” (“No one spits like Gaston…”)
Well, in the movie, Le Fu was just another amusing Disney sidekick. Nothing to write home about. Certainly nothing like Figaro, Meeko, or Iago. Now I’m telling you… the Broadway show was a *whole new world!*
Not only was the stage show a whole new bunch of wonderfulness for Disney geeks like me, but the character Le Fu was absolutely MEZMORIZING to me! The actor playing him *flew* across the stage! Fought and flipped with the servant-turned-rug! He leapt and flipped and prat-fell ALL OVER THE PLACE! This guy was a modern day Arlecchino of the HIGHEST CALIBER! Not even Danny Kaye could out-jester this guy! So, me being the big jester fan that I am… I was enthralled!
I read his bio in the program, and it said he’d had training with Cirque du Soleil among other cool stuff. I thought to myself “Ok - that explains why he could do that flip and land on his ass perfectly at Belle’s feet.” I left the theater, and college, being inspired to be as cool a jester as that guy.
Fast forward to my days building i Scandali and reveling in as much commedia dell arte as I could get my hands on…
Fast forward again to this class in leadership I was sent to for unusual and awkward reasons…
You’ll never guess who was teaching this freaking class…
LE FU!!!!! YES - the man who was the actor that was LeFu in the original cast of Beauty and the Beast who’d inspired my idea of the perfect jester WAS TEACHING THIS CLASS!!! I ask you… how in the name of God do you explain this one? You don’t. You just sit back and enjoy the ride. At least that’s what I did.
So, I chat this guy up, we have a great time in the class, I learn all about what a great leader I already am (ok, some ups and downs and places for improvement), and I have the time of my life actually *learning* from one of the actual inspirations of my life.
His name is Kenny Raskin, and I actually found my old Playbills from B&B in 1994 that have his name in the cast list. He went out to have beer and wings with me after the class, and we had a good old time yakking about performing arts and careers therein. Apparently, this cool company he works for, The Ariel Group, (nothing to do with Disney’s Little Mermaid) was contracted by Booz Allen to teach this leadership course. Kenny moved from acting to teaching for a variety of reasons, but essentially, this company hires actors to teach leadership because of the incredible skills overlap! So, Kenny is my new official Hero ™ and I encourage you to look at his web site: http://www.kennyraskin.com and hire him if you can at all afford it.
December 11: Hanukkah, Jewish class, and The Princess and the Frog! What do these three things have in common, I hear you cry? Well, they all happened on Friday, December 11. My Intro to Judaism class had a nice Shabbat dinner (that I had to be late for because they started at an ungodly early hour for anyone who’s working for a living) that was a nice thing. Lisa and Mona joined me for that and got to meet Rabbi Bernstein and my classmates.
Lisa and Mona, not being complete Disney fans like me but being very supportive of me and not entirely against the idea of a Disney movie, joined me for the long awaited premier of The Princess and The Frog!!! Now, if I’d had my wish, I’d have attended this event dolled up in an old bridesmaid’s dress and tiara with a dozen friends and my sister equally dressed up to welcome in our new sister princess. Mona would have killed me, tho, so I left the tiara and dress at home and attended the movie like a normal person. I didn’t have the time or energy to organize a fully dressed Princess Invasion anyway. I did, however, *LOVE* the movie! Mona and Lisa did too! I’m thrilled to see a Prince and a Princess get to their happily ever after through hard work. And the support of a large alligator.
Ok, this is where the easy part of life ended. Princesses, Kenny, leadership, Mona, holidays, and all the rest of it fell completely to the wayside starting December 12. Not that having surgery, keeping up at work, and living through my life’s adventure was *easy* before December 12, but that’s when there became no time for games. Or sleep. Christmas did happen in there somewhere. My folks, my sister, and I spent it in beautiful Hilton Head at an RCI trade-in condo from my parents’ RCI membership. Scott came to join us on December 26th, and his parents came for lunch on December 27th. Yes, this was the first official meeting of the parental units. Everything went fine. *whew* This was a nice week long break from the moving hell, but the moment the ball dropped after midnight January 1st, the hell started up again.
Remember how I said before that I was giving up my apartment on January 4th? Well, I did.
THE MASTER PLAN:
Scott and I have been driving back and forth between DC and Raleigh for 2.5 years. In order to move our relationship further, the fishing part of the “Fish or Cut Bait” philosophy, we decided to move in together finally. We also decided that it was better for me to move to Raleigh rather than him move to DC. Many variables in that decision: his job is with the State of NC and mine is with a contracting firm, he has a house in Raleigh, and he has a lot of friends in Raleigh and I have a few too. He has no friends in DC, and mine are a small elite group.
So, I moved 95% of my stuff to Raleigh. The movers came on December 21st to move my piano and furniture and any other boxes that Scott and I didn’t manage to move before then. We have been packing up my belongings into boxes for many weeks already and Scott has been bringing them down to Raleigh in his Pennsic trailer. We now have 2 garage sized storage units in Raleigh with most of my stuff and some of his stuff that he moved out of his house to make room for me.
The remaining 5% of my stuff (possibly more like 1-2%) is at my friend’s house here in DC until April. Come April, I’ll move into a small studio apartment near my office. That will be my “Satellite Home.” I will live there Monday - Thursday and drive back to Raleigh for Friday - Sunday. This is the weekly commuting lifestyle that a lot of DC workers live - including a lot of Congress. I’ll telecommute on Fridays, and I may expand that if my work allows it over time.
I’ll drive to DC Monday mornings and be in the office by noon. I’ll drive to Raleigh Thursday nights and get in by midnight. I did this schedule once this past week, and it worked out pretty well. The Thursday night drive to Raleigh was *HELL* because I had hell to deal with at work and I didn’t get to leave the office until 9:30pm. That part sucked big time. But the drive back to DC monday morning was great! It was beautifully sunny, I got up and out on time, I listened to NPR for about 2.5 hours and talked to my sister for the other 2.5 hours. She had the day off work since it was MLK Day. So far, I am liking this schedule. I’m not liking the lack of being completely moved in anywhere, but that will change with time.
Many people have poo-pooed me on this plan. I acknowledge that this is a tough lifestyle, but it is honestly better than what Scott and I have been living with for the past 2.5 years. I also believe strongly that “Life Is Change” and this lifestyle choice is good for now. So, don’t tell me “You’ll only last a year!” I say: Attitude is Everything! I plan to keep my positive attitude about this and rely on my sweet man to keep reminding me of why I’m doing this.
So, at the moment, I’m feeling the first hints of being able to breathe. I’m doing a hell of a lot of emotional work *and* physical work, but the worst is now over. Now, Scott and I have to try to merge our two households into one and figure out how to really live with each other. After 16 years of serious independence, this merge is a lot of work for me. But he’s worth it. :)
October 1: I start a class called “Intro to Judaism!” I’ve been wanting to take this class since I came here and got involved with Cantor Steinberg at Beth El Hebrew Congregation. She’s the one that ran Alan’s memorial service with Rabbi Aft and did the Sh ‘loshim service on her own for us. I’m seriously considering converting to Judaism officially, and this class is a commonly accepted requirement. I’ve been loving it although it’s a heckuvalot of reading. The teacher is Rabbi Stephanie Bernstein, and I have the greatest respect for her. She was a psychotherapist before becoming a rabbi, so she has a perspective I value a great deal. More on this subject later for sure.
October 5: I had surgery for two things that were very unpleasant. One was life-inhibiting and the other was occasionally activity-inhibiting. I’ll share the details with those who wants to know, but my more squeamish friends have sometimes regretted asking. These aren’t unusual or even horrible things, and some people could go so far as to call my squeamish friends total wimps who should just grow up, but I’ve had enough pushback to just say on my publicly accessible blog that they were simply “unpleasant.” I was ill for about 6 months, sluggish, sleepy, and crabby, but it’s over now. October and November were still slow going and extremely low on the activity scale, but I got back on my feet just in time for the holiday insanity.
Mid October: At work, I dove with two feet first into the adventure of the Annual Report to Congress (ARC) at work. Our client, one of the Department of Defense’s many offices that handles environmental issues, produces their own report to Congress every year, and my Booz Allen team creates it! It’s actually a thrilling project because I used this document a lot when I was farmed out to the Corps of Engineers for three years. Now I get to work on the team that produces the document! It’s like getting the backstage tour of a favorite show and getting hired to be on the theater staff!
Now, when I say “document,” keep in mind that the final product barely fits into a huge 4” three-ring binder. The best way to view it is online. I’ll post a link here to the finished product when it’s all done.
October 17: I got to be a mentor again in the Booz Allen & Girl Scouts “Make The Connection” program! This is an awesome program that brings together volunteers from Booz (usually young women who remember being Girl Scouts) and the Girl Scouts National Capital Council to produce a mentoring program. This isn’t mentoring where we get matched up one on one for deep philosophical teachings. The program is 4 events where about 150 Girl Scouts come to a Booz Allen office on a weekend day to go through presentations and exercises about career exploration. The Booz Allen mentors (about a dozen of us) split up and lead groups of the girls through the exercises. The goal is to allow the girls to see us in our grown up glory, ask us whatever questions they want, and get thinking about their careers outside the environment of their parents or school. I really wish I’d had something like this when I was a kid.
We work out of some Girl Scout sources, but a lot comes from the book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens” by Sean Covey, Stephen Covey’s son. I cannot recommend this book enough! It covers all sorts of issues that teenagers struggle with and helps quantify and focus their skills and desires to career paths. Again, a book I wish I’d had twenty years ago.
I deeply love this program, and I have dreams of spinning it off to the Booz Allen office in Indianapolis. Having my sister work for the Central Indiana Girl Scout Council has to have a perk in there somewhere. (No I don’t get free cookies.)
October 22 & 23: Crystal Reports class! One of the big new challenges I have at work is to learn this new (to me) software, Crystal Reports, and create more tools for us to perform QA and data mining on our ARC client’s database. This is very cool because I love data and the mining thereof, but it is extremely challenging because I’m the only one doing this. There are only three people on my team with *any* experience on our client’s database, and none of them have any experience with the Crystal Reports software. So, even getting the thing connected was hell. Many thanks again to my sweet and supportive boyfriend who helped me get through that one! Dating a computer geek has a few perks. I highly recommend it.
October 24: Fundraising Walk for the American Diabetes Association. This was a sad day really. Every year I do this fundraiser, and my friends and family are very generous to the cause. I raise a few hundred dollars in honor of Alan and my SCA friend Gyrth Oldcastle (who died 10 months before Alan from diabetes complications). But every year I dream that I’m going to get a whole lot of people together to show up en masse to the walk and create a physical presence to honor Alan and Gyrth - and it never happens. Part of it is that I’m just a very busy person, but so far, I just haven’t been able to engage the Sophie Super Energy Powers that have served me so well in event planning before. I can’t break through the depression muck to inspire other people enough to take a couple hours on a Saturday to travel to some place in downtown DC and walk a mile with other fundraising people. The whole experience is deeply depressing.
The good news is that my dear friend Randy and my extremely supportive boyfriend Scott both came out with me! I was determined to make something happen this year, and I had dreamed of getting my SCA friends to come out in garb to create something like a procession even if no one showed up. So, we were a procession of three, and I was just grateful that it was the week before Thanksgiving so that we didn’t look totally insane being in costumes. We did have one guy who liked what we were doing take our picture and say he was going to caption it: “We hate diabetes in any era!”
So, it was another year of half-hearted foot dragging for the ADA walk, but I’ll still keep doing it every year. Watch out for my donation request next September!
Somewhere in here at the end of October, I had an interesting turn of life events with a friend of mine from Judaism class. This friend of mine got a job in New York and needed someone to housesit for 6 months. I happened to be giving up my apartment on January 4th, so I offered to go housesit. We had 2 months of overlap, but I considered that time to adjust and get used to living at her house.
To summarize: She quit the job in New York, came back to her house, and now I’m living with her as a guest/roommate. She’s a sweetie, and we just decided to keep to the original plan, I’ll keep her company as I search for the perfect little studio apartment near my office in Crystal City, and I’ll move into this perfect-yet-to-be-found apartment in April. We are having a lovely time, and I’m sincerely enjoying the 15 minute commute from her house to my office. (Big improvement over the 1 hour metro commute.) She’s also a great cook, and the daughter of a professional chef, so I’m seeing more creative ways to cook healthy from her! This morning she made oatmeal-ricotta-chocolate-chip pancakes for us! YUM!!
More to come on the big picture of where the hell I’m physically living, but for now, let’s stick to chronological order of events…
October 31 - HALLOWEEN!!! This is one of my favorite holidays and since I’ve been in DC I’ve been lucky enough to share it every year with Lisa and Mona. They love the holiday too, and this year we got to party with some of Mona’s friends! It was awesome! Scott came up and we had an equal number of adults as kids walking around a really nice DC neighborhood trick or treating! Scott wore his great kilt, I wore my American Colonial period dress, Lisa went dolled up in a cool black dress with sparkles and orange fishnets (AWESOME!), and one of the dads went as a pirate! Mona was a purple and black witch, one of her friends was a goth princess (in a dress custom made that was won at a school auction), and the big surprise for me of the evening was one of the girls as Yoman Rand! Yes! The old school Star Trek blonde in the tiny red dress! (Not the nurse, that was Magel Barrett, Gene Roddenberry’s wife.) This girl’s parents were doing their sacred duty (as all parents should) in educating her by watching all the old school Star Trek episodes with her! So this kid actually knew who she was dressing up as! It was awesome! Ok, awesome for a geek like me. The rest of you can go back to watching House, or Garage, or whatever.
November 3: I voted; did you?
November 7: I had the pleasure of watching Mona play soccer! She’s joined a soccer league, and I got to watch the last game of the season. It was great! I got to hang out with the parents and learn all the new etiquette. Apparently parents are not allowed to shout from the sidelines. Parents, and fans like me, are allowed to yell only generic encouragement from the sidelines that can be encouraging to both sides. Things like “Go girls go!” and “Way to go!” are allowed. Things like “Get your ass over there for defense!” or “Go !” are not allowed. I’m betting anything concerning the referee is not allowed either, but the moms in attendance didn’t cover that.
This is one of the things I love about being an aunt! I get to be involved with kid stuff, support the kid I love, and do things completely unrelated to earning my paycheck.
I think this was the weekend when Lisa, Mona, and I went out to see the movie Where The Wild Things Are. It was awesome! It was amazing to me how different a movie it was. I heard that they tried to capture what it’s like to be a nine year old boy, and they achieved it! The movie was confusing and had an awkward, exploring, desperate feel to it in places. It was definitely “inspired by” the book and did the book honor, but they built a whole new story on top of the book’s foundation. Anyone who has ever been a nine year old boy, been close to a nine year old boy, or been the parent of a nine year old boy will enjoy this film.
November 26: Thanksgiving! I spent Thanksgiving with Scott and his parents in Raleigh. Last year, Scott gave up his Thanksgiving with his parents to come to Indianapolis to have a big Thanksgiving hoopla with my parents, my sister, her fiancé, and his family. At the time, it was a nice thing. Events have progressed since then. This year, to balance it out, I gave up my Thanksgiving with my parents and sister to have it with Scott. It was sweet and quiet. The best part was having Scott, his mom, and me all pitch in to make the dinner. The group effort was very rewarding in that no one was beat and tired at the end of the day.
December 4: My women’s circle (“Egroup” for the cognoscenti) did a big work night lead by one of the very wise women in our community, Teresita Fawcett. She’s amazing in her ability to lead women’s groups and facilitate emotional work. She helped me a lot in my healing work after Alan died and in a number of other issues since then. We hired her to teach our group some advanced facilitation techniques, and it was *awesome*! The more I do this work, the more I think this is the path to world peace.
December 8 & 9: “Leadership With Presence” class: Now, I had a very awkward annual assessment in Mid October for work. The final result was a pretty normal raise and a rating of “Meets Expectations” which was satisfactory for me. There was, however, a “development action” that required me to take a class in leadership, although I don’t really know why this class was chosen for this particular issue. This awkwardness isn’t blog material, so if you’re interested in more detail, ask me next time you see me. The interesting thing is that regardless of *why* I ended up going to this class, this class was an AMAZING AWESOME EXPERIENCE!
I’ll tell you why…
Set the way back machine for fall of 1994. I’m in New York City attending Barnard College and enjoying my opportunities to get student rate tickets to Broadway shows. That year, none other than the legendary “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast” opens and sends me into Disney geek heaven. I saw the show three times before graduating in spring of ’95.
Remember the villain “Gaston?” (“I use antlers in all of my decorating…”)
Remember his sidekick “Le Fu?” (“No one spits like Gaston…”)
Well, in the movie, Le Fu was just another amusing Disney sidekick. Nothing to write home about. Certainly nothing like Figaro, Meeko, or Iago. Now I’m telling you… the Broadway show was a *whole new world!*
Not only was the stage show a whole new bunch of wonderfulness for Disney geeks like me, but the character Le Fu was absolutely MEZMORIZING to me! The actor playing him *flew* across the stage! Fought and flipped with the servant-turned-rug! He leapt and flipped and prat-fell ALL OVER THE PLACE! This guy was a modern day Arlecchino of the HIGHEST CALIBER! Not even Danny Kaye could out-jester this guy! So, me being the big jester fan that I am… I was enthralled!
I read his bio in the program, and it said he’d had training with Cirque du Soleil among other cool stuff. I thought to myself “Ok - that explains why he could do that flip and land on his ass perfectly at Belle’s feet.” I left the theater, and college, being inspired to be as cool a jester as that guy.
Fast forward to my days building i Scandali and reveling in as much commedia dell arte as I could get my hands on…
Fast forward again to this class in leadership I was sent to for unusual and awkward reasons…
You’ll never guess who was teaching this freaking class…
LE FU!!!!! YES - the man who was the actor that was LeFu in the original cast of Beauty and the Beast who’d inspired my idea of the perfect jester WAS TEACHING THIS CLASS!!! I ask you… how in the name of God do you explain this one? You don’t. You just sit back and enjoy the ride. At least that’s what I did.
So, I chat this guy up, we have a great time in the class, I learn all about what a great leader I already am (ok, some ups and downs and places for improvement), and I have the time of my life actually *learning* from one of the actual inspirations of my life.
His name is Kenny Raskin, and I actually found my old Playbills from B&B in 1994 that have his name in the cast list. He went out to have beer and wings with me after the class, and we had a good old time yakking about performing arts and careers therein. Apparently, this cool company he works for, The Ariel Group, (nothing to do with Disney’s Little Mermaid) was contracted by Booz Allen to teach this leadership course. Kenny moved from acting to teaching for a variety of reasons, but essentially, this company hires actors to teach leadership because of the incredible skills overlap! So, Kenny is my new official Hero ™ and I encourage you to look at his web site: http://www.kennyraskin.com and hire him if you can at all afford it.
December 11: Hanukkah, Jewish class, and The Princess and the Frog! What do these three things have in common, I hear you cry? Well, they all happened on Friday, December 11. My Intro to Judaism class had a nice Shabbat dinner (that I had to be late for because they started at an ungodly early hour for anyone who’s working for a living) that was a nice thing. Lisa and Mona joined me for that and got to meet Rabbi Bernstein and my classmates.
Lisa and Mona, not being complete Disney fans like me but being very supportive of me and not entirely against the idea of a Disney movie, joined me for the long awaited premier of The Princess and The Frog!!! Now, if I’d had my wish, I’d have attended this event dolled up in an old bridesmaid’s dress and tiara with a dozen friends and my sister equally dressed up to welcome in our new sister princess. Mona would have killed me, tho, so I left the tiara and dress at home and attended the movie like a normal person. I didn’t have the time or energy to organize a fully dressed Princess Invasion anyway. I did, however, *LOVE* the movie! Mona and Lisa did too! I’m thrilled to see a Prince and a Princess get to their happily ever after through hard work. And the support of a large alligator.
Ok, this is where the easy part of life ended. Princesses, Kenny, leadership, Mona, holidays, and all the rest of it fell completely to the wayside starting December 12. Not that having surgery, keeping up at work, and living through my life’s adventure was *easy* before December 12, but that’s when there became no time for games. Or sleep. Christmas did happen in there somewhere. My folks, my sister, and I spent it in beautiful Hilton Head at an RCI trade-in condo from my parents’ RCI membership. Scott came to join us on December 26th, and his parents came for lunch on December 27th. Yes, this was the first official meeting of the parental units. Everything went fine. *whew* This was a nice week long break from the moving hell, but the moment the ball dropped after midnight January 1st, the hell started up again.
Remember how I said before that I was giving up my apartment on January 4th? Well, I did.
THE MASTER PLAN:
Scott and I have been driving back and forth between DC and Raleigh for 2.5 years. In order to move our relationship further, the fishing part of the “Fish or Cut Bait” philosophy, we decided to move in together finally. We also decided that it was better for me to move to Raleigh rather than him move to DC. Many variables in that decision: his job is with the State of NC and mine is with a contracting firm, he has a house in Raleigh, and he has a lot of friends in Raleigh and I have a few too. He has no friends in DC, and mine are a small elite group.
So, I moved 95% of my stuff to Raleigh. The movers came on December 21st to move my piano and furniture and any other boxes that Scott and I didn’t manage to move before then. We have been packing up my belongings into boxes for many weeks already and Scott has been bringing them down to Raleigh in his Pennsic trailer. We now have 2 garage sized storage units in Raleigh with most of my stuff and some of his stuff that he moved out of his house to make room for me.
The remaining 5% of my stuff (possibly more like 1-2%) is at my friend’s house here in DC until April. Come April, I’ll move into a small studio apartment near my office. That will be my “Satellite Home.” I will live there Monday - Thursday and drive back to Raleigh for Friday - Sunday. This is the weekly commuting lifestyle that a lot of DC workers live - including a lot of Congress. I’ll telecommute on Fridays, and I may expand that if my work allows it over time.
I’ll drive to DC Monday mornings and be in the office by noon. I’ll drive to Raleigh Thursday nights and get in by midnight. I did this schedule once this past week, and it worked out pretty well. The Thursday night drive to Raleigh was *HELL* because I had hell to deal with at work and I didn’t get to leave the office until 9:30pm. That part sucked big time. But the drive back to DC monday morning was great! It was beautifully sunny, I got up and out on time, I listened to NPR for about 2.5 hours and talked to my sister for the other 2.5 hours. She had the day off work since it was MLK Day. So far, I am liking this schedule. I’m not liking the lack of being completely moved in anywhere, but that will change with time.
Many people have poo-pooed me on this plan. I acknowledge that this is a tough lifestyle, but it is honestly better than what Scott and I have been living with for the past 2.5 years. I also believe strongly that “Life Is Change” and this lifestyle choice is good for now. So, don’t tell me “You’ll only last a year!” I say: Attitude is Everything! I plan to keep my positive attitude about this and rely on my sweet man to keep reminding me of why I’m doing this.
So, at the moment, I’m feeling the first hints of being able to breathe. I’m doing a hell of a lot of emotional work *and* physical work, but the worst is now over. Now, Scott and I have to try to merge our two households into one and figure out how to really live with each other. After 16 years of serious independence, this merge is a lot of work for me. But he’s worth it. :)